Hijab: lifting the veil

Ultimately we believe that people should have the freedom to dress whatever way they like. This means freedom from state interference and freedom from religious interference in how one should dress. Anarchist reflections on the debate around the banning of the veil in French schools.

Hijab: lifting the veil

Standing up to religious oppression or state racism?

In France at the moment there is a big controversy about the
recommendation by a government commission and by the president, to
ban the wearing of religious symbols such as the Islamic headscarf
(the hijab) in state schools. The government declares that this
proposed ban is in keeping with France's long tradition of secular
education, and also that it would promote equality between the sexes.
Many of those in France's considerable Muslim minority however see
this step as racist and intolerant and as a direct attack on their
civil rights.

For many people, the wearing of a headscarf is a symbol of
oppression against women. The advice in the Koran that women should
dress modestly is generally interpreted to-day as meaning that Muslim
women should cover their head. Within the Muslim community, women are
often judged on what they wear and the hijab is viewed as the measure
of a woman's piety.

Many argue that the hijab is used as an instrument to control
women's sexuality. There exist extremely negative attitudes, for
example, which consider women who do not cover their hair as somehow
"unchaste". Women are also advised to wear the hijab for their own
protection against sexual harassment. This is really a sort of
justification for sexual harassment if you don't wear the veil. This
sexist argument holds that men are not at all responsible for their
actions (reminiscent of how when rape victims go to court what they
were wearing when they were raped is often scrutinised as if what
they wore could some-how justify being raped).

The hijab is forced on women in many countries under the influence
of Islam, either legally or under cultural and social pressure. In
States where women have no civil rights whatsoever and are treated as
subhuman, forcing women to wear the hijab or a much more extreme
dress code is clearly used to subjugate and humiliate woman.

The women of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of
Afghanistan) state:

"We will never allow the fundamentalists to define
and decree what women should or should not wear. They have no right
to impose the veil upon us. As far as we are concerned, we will NOT
wear the veil as far as security and social discretion allow us, for
we regard rejection of the veil as a symbolic form of resistance and
defiance of the fundamentalists. To wear, or not to wear, the Islamic
veil is a completely personal issue and no one has the right to
interfere with this decision or impose the veil upon us".

Context, however, is important when considering the hijab. It is
important not to equate fundamentalist Islam with all Muslim people.
Not all Muslim men are misogynistic. And for women, the wearing of an
Islamic headscarf may not be in itself inherently oppressive. Many
Muslim women certainly wear the hijab out of their own free will and
often resent being seen by western culture as oppressed victims.
While the women of RAWA reject wearing the hijab in defiance of
religious fundamentalists, some Muslim women in Western society say
that for them wearing the hijab is an act of defiance in a world
increasingly hostile towards and intolerant of Muslim people - that
they wear the hijab as part of their Muslim identity despite the
racist abuse they often get for wearing it.

Others say that they wear the hijab for cultural and religious
reasons and that the idea of modesty behind the head-scarf is not
necessarily sexist; that they want judgment of their physical person
to play no role whatsoever in social interaction.

They correctly point out the fact that Western society is
oppressive with regard to women's appearance. For women who freely
choose to wear the Islamic headscarf, it can be difficult to take
being told you are oppressed for wearing it from a culture where
around 5% of all females spend their teens puking over a toilet bowl
so that they can look like Kate Moss.

One Canadian Muslim woman explains her perspective:

"Women are taught from early childhood that their
worth is proportional to their attractive-ness…..Wearing the hijab
has given me freedom from constant attention to my physical self.
Because my appearance is not subjected to public scrutiny, my beauty,
or perhaps lack of it, has been removed from the realm of what can
legitimately be discussed.

Feeling that one has to meet the impossible male standards of
beauty is tiring and often humiliating…true equality will be had only
when women don't need to display themselves to get attention and
won't need to defend their decision to keep their bodies to
themselves."

Although we do not see progress for humanity coming from religion,
at the same time we do not hold the West as the ideal cultural model.
In any case it is up to Muslim women to struggle against sexist
oppression and to define the parameters of that struggle, not for us
to tell them what to do.

The US State has conveniently used the poor treatment of women in
countries, like Afghanistan and Iraq, as a form of justification for
war. The hypocrisy of this position is highlighted by the fact the
US-backed Iraqi Governing Council has cancelled secular family laws
in Iraq and moved family law under the jurisdiction of Islamic
(sharia) law; a law that destroys women's rights regarding marriage,
child custody, inheritance and allows women to be stoned to death for
adultery.

In France it is hard to see the government's proposed ban as
anything but a cynical political manoeuvre to appease the right-wing
constituency in France and hold onto power in a country where the
extreme right is grow-ing. They are hypocrites who on the one hand
marginalise and stigmatise young Muslim girls under the guise of
secularism and on the other continue to substantially subsidise
private religious schools.

As anarchists we have a long history of struggle for secularism.
However, banning the hijab can only lead towards further exclusion of
the Muslim women in France and encourage religious fundamentalism.

Ultimately we believe that people should have the freedom to dress
whatever way they like. This means freedom from state interference
and freedom from religious interference in how one should dress.

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We strive for a society in which one person or group of people do not dominate or exploit another. In such a society there would be no basis for sexual oppression, domination, or class exploitation. We must work to replace the institutions of power, the nation-state, and capitalism with a worldwide system of grassroots empowerment and self-management of all facets of social and economic life.

One hundred years ago today, on March 8, 1908, thousands of women left their jobs in the sweatshops of New York City's Lower East Side and took to the streets to demand their rights as women and as workers. In 1917, their sisters in Russia followed suit, and helped to bring about the revolution that overthrew the Tsarist autocracy. And in Spain in 1936, the anarchist women of Mujeres Libres helped to free their sisters from centuries of oppression.

If 8 March - International Women's Day - is not to remain simply an annual recurrence, we must smash these chains by means of ever-stronger solidarity and class consciousness, in the knowledge that the liberation of women will never be complete until all of humanity is free from its oppressors, from tyrants, churches, States and bosses. In the knowledge that the freedom of all comes through the freedom of women. [
Italiano]

Flora Célestine Thérèse Henriette Tristán y Moscoso Lesnais (1803-1844) was a French writer of Peruvian descent. Little known in official historiography, probably intentionally forgotten because of the rebellion and desire for freedom that emanates from her writings. Among her works were Peregrinations of a Pariah (1839), Promenades in London (1840) and the booklet The Workers' Union (1843). [Castellano]

We strive for a society in which one person or group of people do not dominate or exploit another. In such a society there would be no basis for sexual oppression, domination, or class exploitation. We must work to replace the institutions of power, the nation-state, and capitalism with a worldwide system of grassroots empowerment and self-management of all facets of social and economic life.

One hundred years ago today, on March 8, 1908, thousands of women left their jobs in the sweatshops of New York City's Lower East Side and took to the streets to demand their rights as women and as workers. In 1917, their sisters in Russia followed suit, and helped to bring about the revolution that overthrew the Tsarist autocracy. And in Spain in 1936, the anarchist women of Mujeres Libres helped to free their sisters from centuries of oppression.

If 8 March - International Women's Day - is not to remain simply an annual recurrence, we must smash these chains by means of ever-stronger solidarity and class consciousness, in the knowledge that the liberation of women will never be complete until all of humanity is free from its oppressors, from tyrants, churches, States and bosses. In the knowledge that the freedom of all comes through the freedom of women. [
Italiano]